Users of various chemical products often have the need or desire to find alternative products made by multiple sources which are comparable to a known product. Various tools are available for cross-referencing known chemical products with related products. For example, printed tables are provided by various sources in which an individual can look up a chemical product number and find a related product of a different brand. These tables sometimes offer packaging information and size comparisons of the related products. Generally, they provide very little of the information necessary to make an educated decision regarding the available products. Many of the prior art printed tables are not current, and when combined with the limited nature of their comparison, this significantly undermines their credibility.
As an alternative to printed tables, E. M. Science provides a DOS-based computer program as well as an Internet website for cross-referencing chemical products. The E. M. Science programs appear to cross-reference products by linking a given product directly to another product (a one-to-one match), much like what is done by the printed tables. While these programs may save time, they still leave unaddressed the problem that very few chemical products are truly "equivalent" in every aspect. Moreover, any time either of the two products are changed, the equivalency of both products must be manually readdressed, and the one-to-one matching with each product likewise adjusted. The E. M. Science tools have limited credibility because they oftentimes fail to point out the critical differences in products.
As a result of these shortcomings in the above mentioned systems, there remains a need for improvements in cross-reference tools for chemical products.